Slide: 1 Introduction
Explaining the Ethics of Golden Rule:
Defining the Golden Rule, The golden rule is defined as rule of treating someone as they would like to be treated. Chuck Klosterman’s article “Does the Golden Rule Hold Up in Modern Society?” examines if it is rational for the rule of golden rule if it is rational. The other says that treating another person as they would like to be treated raises the question, what if the person’s way of wanting to be treated compromises your personal values.
Slide: 2 Understanding the ethics of “golden rule”
The ambiguity of the golden rule on ethics is that one should not ask the other person how they should be treated.
The idea of the golden rule should be an automatic reading of the people’s mind and thought. So for example, if in a ballroom party, the host must be aware of how 100 people in attendance would like to be treated at once. If this reading is misplaced, then the whole idea of the golden rules us not realized.
Slide Number 3: Ethics of Golden rule and its basis
The Golden Rule is also imperfect. It premises on the fact that people that people want to be treated as they want. But the uncertainty is that people don’t want to be treated same. Most people want to be treated special. Reading how people want to be treated thus becomes a very ingratiate and complex affair.
Slide Number 4: Aristotle and Ethics
Aristotle believed that an individual can only be morally upright after mastering basic values of life. Another aspect of virtue
Slide Number 5: Imperfection of the Golden Rule
Golden Rule and Personal Values: I think Chuck Klosterman’s personal values play a very instrumental role in the decision making of how people treat one another. The paradox of the golden rule also base on the conclusion of the two people involved in a situation. People’s personal values as well emotions can affect how one assesses how he or she is treated in a situation. Ethics in this situation becomes a combination of goods, these goods can only be comprised form the levels of the lowest to the highest. Even the famous golden rule, is absent of facts.
Slide Number 6: Individualism and Golden rule
One can also argue that the golden rule, as much as it is the root of human happiness, it is also the root of human evil. Take the example of a couple that are into sadism, S&M, drug use, open-sexuality, polygamy and many others. How do we draw the line of self-respect? Who gets to judge what is wrong and what is not?
The desirability of good thus becomes the representation of ethical standard virtue theory constituting four basic attributes. The attributes included: Strong reliance on some conventionally accepted virtues of character. Ethics relied on the presence of an active community that has certain moral guidelines. Where is the golden rule in this equation?
Slide Number 7: Community and Ethics of Golden Rule
- The community becomes a laboratory where ethics are nourished and practiced. The aspect of virtue ethics posits that morality is not restricted to societal rules or guidelines. Morality of is at discretion of an individual to exercise judgment based on rationality and conscience. Successful recognition and imitation of role models is essential for propagation of morality within the community.
- The relativity of truth is not a theoretical insight but a moral postulate, the condition of a free society, or as they see it”, here truth is diverted from the original conception of higher being as the source of truth and reason, instead the fundamental American value of equality takes the principle of logic and ration.
